Ghachar Ghochar

by Vivek Shanbhag

  Appa reminded us that the SM was visiting in two days and proceeded to imitate his way of speaking. The SM was in the habit of punctuating his speech with the phrase “an important matter,” but in his enunciation it became “unimportant matter.” Amma usually grew annoyed when Appa was being silly, and she’d say, “Enough now. Stop it.” Perhaps that was why the rest of us seldom responded to his jokes. On this day though, she joined in as we all laughed at the SM. Malati couldn’t bring herself to stop—she’d stifle her laughter, raise a piece of rotti to her lips, and start laughing again. She even had to spit a morsel into her hand because she was unable to close her mouth. “First eat, then laugh,” Amma scolded her, smiling all the while. I, too, joined Malati, laughing uncontrollably in solidarity. There was a closeness beyond reason in our kitchen that morning.

  • • •

  This time the SM turned out to be visiting on what was truly an important matter. He did not bring good news for Appa. Changes were being made to the company’s operations. The distribution system was being overhauled and as a consequence all the salesmen were being pressed to accept early retirement. The SM had come down personally to break the news to Appa. Those were not times when you could change jobs easily. Losing one’s job was seen as a disaster. By then Chikkappa had started working in a private company, but his salary was modest. The family was thrown off balance.

  Appa had gotten ready and left early that morning despite knowing that the SM wasn’t expected until the afternoon. “There will be a market visit. I’ll be late returning,” he repeated a couple of times before he left. “I’ve been seeing him all these years. A visit from him only means our targets for the year have been raised,” he said more than once. Perhaps he suspected what lay ahead.

  He returned unusually early. I was doing my homework in the middle room. It must only have been five-thirty or so. He entered and called out to Amma, who was in the kitchen with Malati. This was unusual, too. He stood with his bag still dangling from one shoulder, arm against the doorframe, and took off his shoes, one after the other. He came in wearing his socks, looked at me, dropped his bag listlessly on a chair, and went into the kitchen. A moment later I heard Amma’s panicked voice say, “Oh my god!” I strained my ears but could not hear much. Malati soon emerged and told me what had happened: “Appa’s job is gone. Seems he’ll retire in two months. The SM was here to let him know.”

  Malati and I knew this was bad news, but its full implications were beyond us. I wondered if the SM had prefaced his delivery of the news with “unimportant matter,” but kept the thought to myself. Appa had a cup of tea in the kitchen. Then he said, “I’ll step out for a while,” and left the house. I resumed my homework with a distracted mind. Malati was quiet. After a while she said angrily, “Who does that SM think he is?” and went into the kitchen, only to return at once. She beckoned to me. Amma was sitting in front of the altar, her hands joined. The room was lit only by an oil lamp. A strange fear took hold of me. I looked at Malati. She put a finger to her lips and led me out by the hand.

  We didn’t eat until Appa returned. “Come on, come on, let’s eat,” he said as soon as he entered the house, trying to pretend that everything was normal. Amma served us in silence. Appa went on and on. “Do you know how much they must have spent on the Deepavali decorations in the market?” he asked while the rest of us stared ahead blankly. He was not usually talkative at meals and Amma looked crestfallen to see him babbling like this. He noticed and tried to soothe her: “This just means I’ve retired a little early. I can work elsewhere after two months. There’ll also be the retirement fund.” He turned to me and inquired about school, something he never did. “When are the midyear exams?” he asked. I knew he was only making small talk, but I replied. I even volunteered information about the sports day. After all, we had to make the time pass somehow until Chikkappa arrived.

  We abandoned all pretense when we heard the gate. Malati ran to open the door. Chikkappa must have realized something was wrong from the strange silence that greeted him. Tears welled up in Amma’s eyes. Appa broke the news in as few words as possible.

  As if releasing all the pent-up anguish of the last few hours, Amma broke down. “He still had eight years . . . ,” she sobbed.

  “Don’t you start now,” Appa warned, but her weeping went up a level. Finally he changed tack. “Look here,” he said. “He hasn’t eaten yet. Are you going to just sit there bawling? Heat up the food and serve him.” He set her to work, which calmed her somewhat.

  Amma lit the kerosene stove, not the gas. She had already begun to economize. “Don’t ask me to use the gas from tomorrow,” she said. “The sky won’t fall if you wait ten minutes for tea.” Appa told her he still had two months to go. “That will give us time to get used to it,” she said.

  When Malati and I finished dinner, we didn’t leave the kitchen as we normally would; we sat there on the doorstep, side by side. Appa ate slowly, taking breaks in between morsels to tell Chikkappa details he hadn’t mentioned to us.

  “This is not about me alone. Our whole distribution system is being outsourced. There won’t be any more salesmen in the company. They’ll all be asked to retire early.”

  Chikkappa interrupted Appa’s description of the new distribution system. “What do the union people say?” he asked.

  “Oh, they’ve been silent for a long time now. Their mouths have been stuffed with cash. There’s no other way now. Just take the early retirement, get whatever money is being offered, and leave the company. We’ll see what happens. I can always look for a job afterwards.”

  “It’s the same story everywhere,” Chikkappa said. “Every company now prefers to work through these big distribution agencies. You might get a job with one of them. You have enough experience, after all . . . They pay better, too. A colleague’s brother faced exactly this situation, and now he’s earning more than before.” The mood lightened somewhat.

  Chikkappa splashed some buttermilk onto his plate, mixed in the remaining traces of vegetable and curry leaves with a finger, and drank straight from the plate. As he slowly picked up individual grains of rice still stuck to the plate and ate them, he brought up the matter of starting a new business.

  “There’s something I’d like to say,” he said. “It’s possible that whatever’s happening is for the best. It might be time to make a decision.” It all sounded very mysterious, but as Chikkappa spoke, it was evident from his tone that this was something he’d been thinking about. The rest of us sat there in shock. Our family had only known a salaried life. This was the first time anyone had thought of starting a business. Sona Masala was created that day in the kitchen. A crucial moment for the family, whose fate was about to take a sharp turn.

  “This is the business my current company does. I’ve seen for two years how it is run. There’s a fellow from Kerala who works with me named Kurup. He’s said he will help in return for a commission. If it all goes to plan there’s a lot of money to be made. The idea is to buy spices in bulk, package them, and sell them in the city. We can source the spices from Kerala initially, and then from wherever we get a good price. It’s the sort of business where there’s a good profit even when it runs only fairly well. And if the rates go up while we have inventory, we win the jackpot . . .” Though he was describing the business to Appa, he was speaking indirectly to the rest of us as well. We listened, spellbound. And perhaps with some fear, too. By the time Chikkappa finished speaking, the hand with which he had eaten had dried. Amma had forgotten about her own dinner.

  Chikkappa may have had the business worked out, but he had no capital. “It’s hard to get a bank loan unless you invest some of your own money,” he said and went to wash his hands. Appa made his decision in the half minute it took Chikkappa to return. Appa told him: “My retirement benefits will amount to around one hundred thousand rupees. It’s yours to invest. And then the banks will give you a loan. Start the business as
soon as you can.” That was all the encouragement Chikkappa needed. He had been in need of a spark to light the fire, and here he’d been handed a torch.

  I’ve always felt that Appa’s impulsive decision that day had something to do with all of us being present there in the kitchen. Who knows if he’d have come to the same conclusion if left alone to mull it over.

  Then Chikkappa said to Appa, “You will be a fifty percent partner in the business.” He’s been as good as his word. Today my father owns half of Sona Masala’s considerable assets.

  FOUR

  Amma, Malati, and I—we’re tied for third place in the household hierarchy, though perhaps Amma occupies a marginally higher position since her entire life revolves around the house and family. She will go to any lengths to protect them—like that time she waged a war against ants.

  The house we lived in when Chikkappa and Appa decided to start Sona Masala was in one of those teeming lower-middle-class areas of Bangalore. Small houses, all packed together. You could open our front door and be on the road in exactly four steps. Appa had been living there since before he was married. Our house had four small rooms, one behind the other, like train compartments. You could see right through the house if you kept all the doors open. The first room was just big enough for the wooden bench it contained. This was where Chikkappa slept. He sometimes returned late, and on those nights we’d leave the door unbolted so he could let himself in. He could go to sleep in the front room without waking the rest of us. The space beneath the bench was where we left our slippers and Appa his pair of shoes before proceeding farther into the house. Here were also stowed my cricket bat and my sister’s umbrella.

  The next room was the middle room, where Malati and I slept, did our homework, had our fights, and also where Appa did his accounts. It was the center of our domestic life, and I suppose was the closest thing we had to a living room. The next room received almost no light. It had a pooja altar in one corner and was used as a storeroom for grain and groceries. All our mattresses were stacked up there during the day, and Appa and Amma slept here at night. The room was a little damp, and the air made it feel different from the rest of the house. When the oil lamp in front of the altar went out, it would release a strand of dark smoke that filled the room with a sweet sooty smell. I often put off pouring oil into the lamp so this would happen.

  Then came the kitchen, which was a little longer than the other rooms. It led to the bathroom, whose back door opened onto the tiniest of yards and a toilet. To go at night meant walking through the whole house. No matter how careful one was, the creaking of all those doors was hard to subdue. When it grew loud enough to wake everyone at night, Amma knew she had to oil the hinges.

  The house had windows on both sides, but those on the right side looked over a drain and so were almost never opened. The windows on the other side allowed the smell of our neighbors’ cooking to invade the house. They seemed to use great quantities of garlic, and the smell often overwhelmed us, disgusting Amma in particular. But during the day these windows had to be kept open so we could have some light. As soon as it was dusk, Amma would rush through the house, shutting them. There was hardly any furniture; the size of our rooms accommodated very little: a cupboard and a table for the gas stove in the kitchen; two green foldable metal chairs in the living room; a bench in the front room. There was no question of fitting any beds into that house; everything was done on mats laid out on the floor.

  My morning alarm was the sound of Amma sweeping. At dawn she’d splash some water on the thin strip of stone between our front door and the road, scrape it clean with a coconut broom, and draw a small rangoli with rice flour. If it was cold I’d sleep a little longer, then wake up to the smell of breakfast spreading through the house. After Malati and I left for school and Appa for the office, Amma would wash the pots and pans, sweep and mop the house, and do the laundry. When Malati was old enough, Amma began trying to enlist her help with housework. But Malati had the ability to predict when she might be called on to do some work, and would vanish on one pretext or the other: homework, a bath, a school test, a friend’s house, if nothing else an urgent trip to the toilet. This slipperiness was a source of some friction between her and Amma.

  When he first started working, Chikkappa saved for months from his small income before managing to bring cooking gas to our kitchen. Along with it came the table the stove would rest on. There was such a bustle of excitement and anticipation the day the gas arrived. The workmen who brought the cylinder and stove placed them in the middle of the kitchen, put them together, showed us the flame, and left. We had already decided where to install the stove, but we went over the matter again at some length just to prolong the moment. Amma repeated at least ten times that she’d heard tea could be made in five minutes on a gas stove. She wondered if food cooked standing up would be as tasty. She joked: “Don’t ask me for tea again and again simply because it will be quick to make.” We had a long discussion about how the gas cylinder ought to be turned on and off to ensure maximum safety. Appa warned Amma: “Watch carefully now. You’ll forget everything otherwise.” And she listened quietly without putting up a fight. Amma had surveyed the neighborhood about its gas usage patterns. She told us how long a cylinder lasted in each neighbor’s house and how it could be stretched. “If it’s used only for urgent cooking, it lasts two months,” she said. “Even when it’s run out, it seems you can turn the cylinder upside down and get a little more.” The inaugural preparation was to be a round of tea. I was sent out to buy some snacks for accompaniment.

  None of us remembers when exactly the ant menace started. In the beginning, we’d spot an ant here and there, but after a while they took over the house. There was nothing we could do without knowing where they came from, and this was impossible because they were everywhere. Amma, who had to spend the whole day with them, would say, “They’re not ants. They’re evil spirits come here in disguise.”

  We had two types of ants. One was a small, brisk-moving black variety that appeared only occasionally. But when it did, it came in an army numbering thousands. These ants entered the house in orderly columns, then began to wander everywhere in apparent confusion, always bumping heads and pausing before seeming to realize something and rushing off in random directions. They had no discernible purpose in life other than trying our patience. It didn’t seem like they were there to find food. Nor did they make the effort to bite anyone. Left to their own devices, they’d quickly haul in particles of mud and build nests here and there in the house. You could try scuttling them with a broom, but they would go into a mad frenzy and climb up the broom and onto your arm. Before you knew it, they’d be all over you, even under your clothes. For days on end there would be a terrific invasion, and then one day you’d wake up to find them gone. There was no telling why they came, where they went. I sometimes saw them racing in lines along the windowsill in the front room, where there was nothing to eat. Perhaps they were on a mission of some sort, only passing through our house in their self-important columns. But not once did I see the tail of a column, an ant that had no other ants behind it.

  The other type of ant was a brown variety with more intelligence. They weren’t particularly fast, but they had about them a clarity, a sense of purpose. You never found them rushing about aimlessly, killing time. But if there was as much as a speck of food to be had, they would somehow find out, turn up in orderly lines, and with great concentration haul bits of food out through a corner of the window or into a hole in the floor we’d never noticed before. These ants could drive Amma mad. She could not stand the feeling that everything we were eating had first been tasted by ants. She took to creating a moat around the food she had cooked, placing the containers in a pan filled with water. Even then some of the ants would try to swim across and perish in the process.

  Any carelessness on our part—a box with a lid that wasn’t shut tight, a serving spoon lying unwashed—immediately came to the attention
of these ants. If a single grain of rice dropped outside a plate, you would see ants deliberating its transportation before you rose from your meal. If one of us brought a snack out to the middle room, ants would carry away crumbs we hadn’t even realized we’d dropped. They’d gather around rings left by teacups on the floor. A mortar used to make chutney and washed a little too casually? Ants. Coconut grated and shell left lying around for a minute? Ants to finish off any remaining specks. Charred flakes around the edge of the dosa pan? Within no time—ants.

  Amma was obsessive about washing the pots and pans. She’d scrub them clean immediately after she finished cooking. Malati and I were trained to wash our cups and plates as soon as we were done with them. Looking back, it’s possible all this had nothing to do with cleanliness and was simply part of Amma’s struggle against the ants.

  But it was a losing battle. For all that we did to keep them at bay, they’d seize on the smallest lapse and invade. Just when we thought we had the upper hand they’d turn up in the most unlikely places. I once opened my pencil case to find it swarming with ants.

  Amma resorted to chemical warfare—all sorts of powders and poisons. She made a dough from flour and Gammexane powder and sealed cavities behind which the ants were suspected of having their hideouts. Whether this killed any ants or not, it at least prevented Amma from feeling entirely powerless. The rest of us, too, were hardened by strife. It became a reflex to reach out and squash a stray passing ant. We’d flatten them with our hands or feet or books wherever we saw them.

  On someone’s advice Amma started treating the house with neem smoke. An old tin box was reserved for the purpose. About once a week, burning coals would be tipped into it over a base of sand, and handfuls of neem leaves thrown in. It produced thick smoke. Amma covered her nose and mouth with the end of her sari and walked the fuming box around the house, letting it linger in corners and behind the cupboard. Once I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and found Amma in the kitchen on her haunches, facing the wall, tracing the path of a line of ants with a flashlight. Now, unlike rats and cats, ants don’t make things fall in the night and wake people up. I can only imagine the clamor they must have created in her mind. At one point, she even went around meeting officials and got the city corporation to fumigate the neighborhood. It’s impossible to say whether it made a difference. We still had ants.